The case of the missing vehicle

La Cieca’s sources tell her that a planned revival of Faust at the Met in the fall of 2014 has been canceled, because who wants to see that ugly thing again, or else the leading lady didn’t feel like singing it, whichever. Anyway, the situation goes something like this: the company has under contract Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Artur Rucinski and René Pape for eight performances or so during that time. Your assignment, cher public, is to come up with an opera with plausible roles for at least three, or ideally all four, of these artists. (Photo: Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera)

As much as I’d love to hear Netrebko take on Elena/Helene or Devereux or Elsa, she probably has planned her role debuts quite carefully and probably won’t take on a huge new role. If they don’t end up doing another revival of Elisir or Boheme, I feel like the most likely opera is Rondine: two relatively short roles that shouldn’t be challenging for either of them, plus the Met has a nice production of that.

joggerboy

The Met’s never tried out early Mozart (eg. La Finta Giardiniera) before as far as I know…

pobrediablo

On a slightly different note, someone mentioned that Yoncheva is making her Met debut next season. Any details?